First Things RSS Feed - Ralph McInerny https://www.firstthings.com/author/ralph-mcinerny en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:54:30 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/ralph-mcinerny 60 Effable https://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/12/003-effable https://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/12/003-effable Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0500 1

Where are words when not yet spoken:
on the tongue,
in the mind,
perhaps in air,
nowhere?
Their meanings, more elusive
still, unbreathed await
articulation,
though I have heard
in the beginning was the word.

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]]> The Writing Life https://www.firstthings.com/article/2006/03/the-writing-life https://www.firstthings.com/article/2006/03/the-writing-life Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:00:00 -0500 It is the rare reader of fiction who does not at some time or other consider becoming a writer. It comes and goes over the years for many, and some carry it about forever as an unredeemed promissory note to themselves. In their heart of hearts, they regard themselves as writers. When my first novel appeared, I got a note from a senior colleague to the effect that it was sly of me not only to think of writing a novel but actually to do it. The capacity, apparently, like depravity for Calvin, was taken to be universal.

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]]> Memento Mortimer https://www.firstthings.com/article/2001/11/memento-mortimer https://www.firstthings.com/article/2001/11/memento-mortimer Thu, 01 Nov 2001 00:00:00 -0500 Many years ago Mortimer Adler took me to lunch at Antoine’s in New Orleans and introduced me to patates soufflées. The occasion was the publication of my first novel, and we were attending the annual convention of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, an organization of which Adler was a member and with which he had a long and cordial relationship. Talking philosophy in a posh restaurant was something common for Adler, though many of his neopuritanical critics treated it as sufficient cause to dismiss him as a poseur. I only felt like a rustic nephew being treated by a rich and cosmopolitan uncle.

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]]> Catholicism in America https://www.firstthings.com/article/1990/03/catholicism-in-america https://www.firstthings.com/article/1990/03/catholicism-in-america Thu, 01 Mar 1990 00:00:00 -0500 Catholicism and the Renewal of American Democracy
by george weigel
paulist press, 218 pages, $11.95

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